By Mike Scarcella
(Reuters) – A U.S. judge in Maryland is scheduled to hear arguments on Friday over the erroneous deportation of a Salvadoran man who was flown to El Salvador last month as part of an agreement by President Donald Trump’s administration with that country’s government to detain alleged gang members.
Attorneys for the man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, will ask U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis at a 1 p.m. hearing to force the administration to ask El Salvador to return him to the U.S. and to bar the government from continuing to pay El Salvador to detain him.
The U.S. has acknowledged Abrego Garcia’s deportation was made in error, but said it had no legal authority to bring him back to the country.
The hearing in the Greenbelt, Maryland, federal court will mark another flashpoint in the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration.
Trump on March 15 invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to rapidly deport alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. The administration said it sent two flights to El Salvador that day carrying deportees processed under the rarely used wartime statute and a third flight carrying people deported under other rules.
A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official in a court filing said Abrego Garcia was wrongfully placed on the third flight despite an October 2019 judicial order granting him protection from deportation.
Abrego Garcia was stopped and detained by ICE officers on March 12 and questioned about his alleged gang affiliation. Abrego Garcia has disputed the government’s assertion that he was a member of the gang MS-13.
His lawyers, who also represent his wife and five-year-old child in the U.S., in a court filing said the U.S. had failed to take any voluntary steps “to rectify what they themselves describe as an error.”
(Reporting by Mike Scarcella; Editing by David Gregorio)
Comments